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Tag: sticking to your meal plan

Most people are awesome at dieting and sticking to their meal plans and macro counting Monday-Thursday.

They do everything right. They pack their lunches. They turn down cookies at work. They weigh and measure their food. They avoid fast food. They don’t snack outside of their planned snacks. They are on the path to success until….

Friday night. Saturday. Sunday.

Then these same people who wouldn’t touch a piece of chocolate on Tuesday are wolfing down chocolate pie and ice cream, guzzling beers at the local hang out, and eating a meal of 2000 calories after work. Then, figuring they already broke their diet, they continue to do so all weekend until Monday comes around. They get back on their diet only to break during the weekend again and wonder why their body composition hasn’t changed or they haven’t lost weight.

In order for your diet/meal/nutrition plan to work, adherence is the key. It trumps everything else. You have to stick to it. Almost always. 95% of the time. If you want results.

Can you have a cookie? A piece of pie? Ice cream?

Yes!

If it fits into your macros for the day.

Otherwise, a small cookie, a small piece of pie, a small bit of ice cream.

AND THAT’S IT!

Many diets out there allow you to cheat. Regularly.

A lot of nutrition plans use the 80/20 rule: adhere 80% of the time, cheat 20% of the time.

This can potentially work.

The problem is most people abuse the 20%. And the 20% turns into 25% or 30% or more. Then they are in trouble. But they tell themselves “Hey, it’s ok. It’s a cheat meal.”

When cheat meals become excessive, you’ve lost. You’ve negated all the work you did during the week and you’re at square one. You look the same. You feel the same (maybe even worse because you’ve cheated when you know you shouldn’t have). And you’re so frustrated you throw in the towel altogether on eating healthy.

I propose a solution: tell yourself you can’t cheat. Make this your mentality. Change how you look and feel once and for all and it’ll be a lot easier to turn down a beer.